One thing I've learned from adoption expert and social worker, Beth O'Malley, is that talking about hard topics is essential. She knows. She was adopted from foster care as an infant, was an adoption social worker for the Department of Children and Families, in Massachusetts, and is an adoptive mother.
O’Malley says that’s it up to us, as parents to initiate conversations about adoption and to make it safe to share thoughts, feelings and experiences about anything. Addiction. Abuse. Loss. Grief. Trauma. Anything. Everything. Early and a lot.
She gives parents all sorts of ideas for how to make this easier to do. One easy way, she says, is with TV that covers the themes we want to talk about with our kids.
Rarely has a show been as good for this as This Is Us. The season one finale is on tomorrow night and I can't wait.
Regular watchers know that Randall, adopted as an infant, is angry at his mother who has lied to him for years about not knowing anything about his birth parents. Randall learned this on Thanksgiving (the episode before last) and is processing his feelings about being betrayed. He’ll see his mother in the next show, near the Christmas holiday.
As an adoptive mother, it's thrilling for me to see a show about adoption that doesn't romanticize adoptive parents or demonize birth families and that deals with loss, identity and being a bi-racial family. In this show, the child who is adopted, Randall, isn't considered the "lucky" and saved child who is spared of a bad life base don his birth circumstances. That's rare.
The show doesn't ignore what is central in all adoptions and that is traumatic loss. Loss, lots and lots of possible losses are at least hinted at if not depicted. Loss of birth parents, yes, but also of a birth culture or community or in the case of international adoption, a birth country. There is the loss of having relatives who look alike or similar or are the same race. The loss of knowing medical facts or family history. The loss of knowing and living with birth siblings or even knowing about them.
The losses are covered as well for adoptive parents as well but what I love about this show is that the main story of loss isn't about infertility. It's not that infertility isn't important and a reason many people choose to adopt. For many, it's agonizing. That's one part of adoption we know a little about and see covered somewhat on TV. But many of us who have adopted, are not infertile and that story line is rarely known or shown.
People adopt for a lot of reasons. In this show, the parents (Jack and Rebecca) weren't planning to adopt. They were planning to give birth to triplets and one of them, a boy, doesn't survive the delivery. That loss is shown as well. The adoptive mother, in particular, takes the loss hard but what i love about this show is this is a mother who had been pretty ambivalent about becoming a parent in the first place. That too is something rarely seen on TV.
The reason for Randall's adoption is that after being abandoned at a fire station by his birth father, he’s brought to the same hospital as the triplets (two who lived and one who didn’t survive the delivery and died).
The triplets are White. Randall is Black. But the parents of the triplets decide to adopt Randall because he is needing parents at the same time as they have lost a son. They decide he is meant to be their son.
But unlike his siblings, Randall has another family as well as his adoptive family. He has a deceased mother he knows nothing about and a father he also knows nothing about.
Adoption is a major theme in this show but it’s not the only one. Many ACEs are explored: abandonment, struggles with addiction, food for one child (Kate) and alcohol for one parent (Jack). It's implied that the mother, Rebecca, had a difficult upbringing was rough and she has "stuff" to feal with as relates to her family of origin. It’s not detailed but she has conflict and fears and they seem to drive some of her protective/over-protectiveness and maybe play a part in her having deceived Randall as well as her husband who never knew Rebecca met and met with Randall's birth father more than once.
And, as is true for lots of us, all that emotional and unresolved "stuff" gets harder around the holidays when expectations and visits might be elevated in frequency or intensity.
The show is often hilarious and touching and not just deep. It spans decades, goes back and forth in time in ways that are interesting rather than confusing.
It’s groundbreaking in many ways. One is how it shows the weight issues of Kate who is obese, struggles with food addiction and is considering gastric bypass surgery. We see her struggle with weight but we also see her as a smart and sexy professional balancing a new relationship and a move at the same time. This is so rare to see on television.
While the topic of race isn't explored in depth it is addressed. Randall struggles with feeling and looking and being different are shown. His parents struggle as well and with more than how to help Randall take care of his hair or skin. His parents fumble at times figuring out how to find a wider community for Randall so he’s around other people of color. They work to find adult role models as well who can model what it means to be a Black man in the world in ways Randall father, who is White, can’t.
As the white mother of a daughter who is Asian I appreciate this. My daughter faces racism that I’ve never experienced. I can speak to her about it but can’t relate or share the same experience with her. And this is not always easy for either one of us and sometimes I want to avoid the subject completely. But as parents, though we might want to we can’t.
It's refreshing to see a show that touches on these topics at all, never mind one that's on in prime time and is popular with lots of people and helps remind us not to ignore topics and conversations that are important for our own children.
I'm relieved that Randall's birth father, William is as complicated as real people are. Randall searches for him as an adult, and when he finds him he learns that he is dying. Their time together is short. I searched for my own birth father who left when I was an infant and so while I’m not adopted I could relate to this story line somewhat. Like Randall, my father struggled with addiction. Unlike Randall’s father though, my father never got sober.
Randall learns his father is a fascinating man who is far more than just an addict in recovery. He’s also a musician and a lover of plays and poetry and social justice. He’s been an activist and a cat lover, as well.
We see them tenderly and sometimes awkwardly try to create a relationship as adults who are related but don’t know each other yet.
This is a show that does complex well. Rebecca, Randall's mother, is afraid of losing Randall but also she is afraid for Randall and wants him to never feel he is not wanted and doesn't belong. She makes decisions we doubt or even despise, as viewers, which seem cowardly at sometimes and protective at others.
This show does a good job at showing how little professionals and adoptive parents, in times past (and still sometimes in the present) fail to consider the needs of our children who are adopted. Often, we make assumptions about what is best for them, even as is the case in this show, they are adults. Sometimes we do this for reasons that are well-intentioned but also might be based in our own bias about race and class and what the presence of ACEs means in people – especially poor people as opposed to wealthy people. This show makes it clear that all people deal with ACEs and throughout the life span.
This show is educational for lots of reasons, to and for lots of us.
While it does a great job (though not a perfect one) tackling adoption, one need not have been adopted or adopted a child to relate to the themes in this show.
If one cares about loss, adoption, addiction and race as well as sibling rivalry and marriage and parenting and dating, this shows touches on tons of stuff.
What I love most is how no one is demonized or romanticized but instead, most everyone is humanized. People are imperfectly perfect and therefore relatable and believable. This Is Us really is a show about a lot of Us, many of whom have story lines and experiences that don’t always get covered sensitively or at all on TV. What a wonderful change.
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